Honeyguide Opened Environmentally Sound Buildings at Randilen WMA

A full furnished open office, meeting room and two resident’s houses are in a place

Last week, the Honeyguide a community-based not-for-profit conservation organization team took a trip to the Randilen WMA to develop annual work plan for the year 2017 by incorporating Honeyguide and the WMA work plan in a sense to produce a collective work plan for conservation in the wildlife management area. The WMA is one of the prominent and fastest growing in Tanzania with funding supports from the USAID through NTRI alliance of conservation and development organization with a prime lead from the Nature Conservancy (TNC). The Management area’s daily anti-poaching strategies, mitigation of the human-wildlife conflict and managements of the natural resources supports amongst the services provided by the Honeyguide.

The NTRI project have been instrumental in the development of Randilen and its new buildings, gates and other infrastructures that will help improve the conservation mission. The Honeyguide team, TNC and Randilen WMA management held two days meeting on work plan in the new hall just finished last week.

The team inside new building during work plan discussion. Picture @Honeyguides’ Library

According to Honeyguide’s Office Administrator the buildings are made up of one large open office, the meeting room and the staff houses enough to accommodate two families. “The buildings are pre-fabrications materials which are environmentally friendly with low cost, this will be a case modal to other WMA’s” Fadhili Madava.

After enjoying the new atmosphere of the working environment within the meeting hall, everyone gathered to celebrate the opening by eating fresh barbecue goat meat and sharing stories. Some members spent a few hours in the morning on a game drive to see the overall layout of the area and witnessed big groups of grazing cattle coming in to feed on the drought reserves that Randilen WMA provides herders.

Honeyguide is a grass roots, non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Tanzania dedicated to support communities and the conservation of wildlife and natural resources through long-term community partnerships. The African Honeyguide is a bird that actively guides humans (and honey badgers) to beehives; we chose it as our symbol as it is a beautiful example of the symbiotic relationship between humans and wildlife and of successful partnerships in general.